The crowd goes wild, and it takes several seconds before Bailey realizes that they are applauding Bill. One evening, Bill, frustrated with his assigned role, performs a complex stair-step dance on the drums while Bailey sings. Bailey reluctantly agrees and hires Bill as an extra tom-tom player in a dance number. After Bailey offers roles to Ada, a singer, Fats, a piano player and the café's band, Selina begs him to take Bill, too. One night at Ada Brown's Beale Street café, where Bill has been hired as a waiter, Bailey and Selina stop by looking for new talent to star in Bailey's new show. In Memphis, Bill finds work on a riverboat, but when he dances with a group of talented minstrels on board, they encourage him to go down to Beale Street to secure a job as a dancer. Selina tries to convince Bill to stay in New York and pursue a dancing career, but Bill says he has a job waiting for him in Memphis and plans to stay there until he can make something of himself.
Selina and Bill are attracted to each other, but her manager, Chick Bailey, gets jealous and intervenes. After Selina and Bill dance together, Selina is introduced as the evening's star and joins Jim Europe's band in a song. At a hall set up as a nightclub for the returning servicemen, Bill sees a beautiful woman and discovers to his amazement that she is Selina Rogers, the sister of a close friend who died in the war. One such dedication from Noble Sissle inspires Bill to remember the hero's welcome he and fellow members of Jim Europe's 15th New York Regiment band received when they returned from France after World War I: Bill and his best friend Gabe live it up in high style in New York City, and Gabe pretends to be a rich talent manager in order to impress his scatterbrained girl friend. As Bill reads the various dedications from his old friends, he reminisces about the early days of his career.
On a pleasant day in Hollywood, California, Bill "Corky" Williamson, a semi-retired tap dancer, is teaching his craft to a group of neighborhood children when the mailman delivers a special edition of "Theatre World." The magazine is celebrating "the magnificent contribution of the colored race to the entertainment of the world during the past twenty-five years" and features Bill on the cover.